


Lost Company

by niseag



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Blood and Violence, F/M, Multi, Not A Pro-War Fic, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:41:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27145384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/niseag/pseuds/niseag
Summary: When Leslie Knope was nineteen years old, she ran away to join the army."Leslie had had something to lose, once. Not any more. There was nothing left for her here. But still, she was alive. There was still something she believed in. And she still had something left to give."A World War II AU.
Relationships: Leslie Knope/Ben Wyatt
Comments: 12
Kudos: 17





	1. Prologue: Eleanor

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thanks to beautiful beta fish Meg (rockethop) & Kate (changenotcoins). There is no conceivable way this fic could exist without your help and support! <3

**_Prologue_ **

**Chicago, 1960s**

It began like any other summer’s day.

Eleanor was at home for the break and had happily thrown herself back into Chicago life, helping her parents with painting banners for the latest rally. She lay on the floor, humming as she traced big black letters onto cloth with a giant rectangular brush while her mother dabbed at a rather more intricate design and her father ran their finished works out to dry in the yard. 

“How’s it going over there, mom?” she asked, leaning over to glance at her mother's work.

“Great!” her mother beamed. “I think this one says, ‘We’re taking what’s ours, so stick that in your pipe and smoke it, you stale old jerks!’ What do you think?”

“Let me see.” Eleanor crawled over to where her mother was sitting and attempting, heavy-handedly, to recreate the image of the riveter from the old wartime posters in a style that was clearly intended to mimic pointillism. “Oh,” El said. “Wow. It’s so... detailed.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

El tilted her head and looked at the dubious picture, trying not to smile at the wordy slogan that accompanied it. “Nothing!” she lied. “It’s only… are you painting the Sistine Chapel or trying to get us jobs?”

“What, you just expect me to write _‘women demand equality’_ and call that a _banner?”_

Eleanor raised her eyebrows and looked pointedly at her own stretch of homespun cotton, which said exactly that.

“Oh.” She at least had the decency to look embarrassed. “Well, it has, um…” her mother faltered, eyeing the plain red lettering, “Spirit? You know, it’s bold.” She smiled and curled a fist and slapped her other palm with it with far too much enthusiasm.

“It’s practical.”

She didn’t seem convinced. “But is it _eye-catching?”_

“Yes!”

“Okay, okay! I just think a little imagery’s nice.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being practical.”

“You sound just like your father,” her mother teased.

“Ugh. You should’ve called Aunt Steph if you wanted to get artistic, mom. Remember that fish she painted? The one riding the bike?”

Eleanor’s mother wrinkled her nose. “Rosie isn’t a _fish,_ El.”

“She’s painted Rosie before.”

“Has she?”

“Yeah. For civil rights. Rosie and Rosa. Remember?”

“Oh! Yes. Your dad loved that one.”

El remembered her father’s comments at that particular rally, many years ago—innocent enough to her childish ears at the time, but really quite filthy with the proper context that comes with age—and gagged in mock disgust. “I can’t believe you married him.”

Her mother smiled, returning to her painting. “Well, it was the 40s.”

“And?”

“And women had no economic autonomy. And I was _very_ desperate.” She rolled her eyes affectionately, and Eleanor laughed.

“Well, may no other woman suffer your fate.”

“That’s the spirit.”

They painted on for a few hours, bantering playfully back and forth as the sun crested in the sky and began to dip again towards the horizon, throwing warm, lazy afternoon light through the window. El’s mother had just finished her third ornate banner as the dull thud of footsteps on the porch drifted into the workroom. There was a long pause—so long that Eleanor wondered if she’d only imagined the sound—before there was a hurried knock on the door. 

Eleanor started to scramble to her feet, but before she stood all the way upright she heard her father’s telltale footsteps skipping over the hardwood floor of the hall at his usual jog as he called out, “Got it!”

“Okay!” El called back and moved to the window instead of towards the hall. She unlatched it and swung the windowpane aside, leaning out to peek at the front porch as her mother came up to join her in spying on the visitor.

He was a young man, a little older than Eleanor, with sandy curls and a fine suit. They heard the front door creak as it swung inwards and the warm, indistinct sound of her father greeting the stranger. To the women’s immense amusement, the young man removed his hat and held it to his chest as he inclined his head in an odd little bow.

“Who’s this?” 

“I don’t know. I thought he might be a friend of yours.”

El shook her head. “No. I don’t know. He looks sort of familiar.”

“Yes, he does…”

“But I don’t know where I know him from.”

“No, neither do I. He’s sweating bullets, though. Look at him.”

He really did look anxious. His face was in profile from where El stood, so his expression was difficult to read, but it was clear in the tense line of his body and the halting rhythm of conversation between him and her father, who El could tell was trying to put him at ease. She recognised his soft, mellow campaign voice, the one he used while he spoke to voters, appealing to them to vote for a woman in the Illinois primaries.

Eleanor strained to hear the conversation, but she couldn’t catch much of it. The stranger had pulled a wad of paper out of his inner coat pocket, and she made out the words _‘left’_ and _‘Knope,’_ and _‘Indiana.’_ She turned to her mother and frowned. “Did you catch that?”

“Indiana?”

El shook her head anxiously, biting her lip. _“Knope.”_

As if on cue, her mother paled and her eyebrows knitted together, leaving a tense little V wrinkled between them.

“Do you think it’s about grandma?” El murmured, crossing her arms warily at the mention of her. Her mother said nothing for a moment, pursing her lips and curling her own arms around her stomach as she watched the stranger through the open window. He held out the thick handful of papers and they vanished from view as El’s father took them from him. 

“I’d better go see,” her mother said, finally, with gravity, seeming to shrink under the weight of the words and the possibility they held. The gravity swelled beyond her small body and spread within the room, pressing on El’s skin as heavily as it did on her mother, a quiet, significant anticipation sinking in and setting in her marrow.

El’s mother closed her eyes and pressed her palms to her cheeks, rallying as she drew herself slowly from the window and moved almost mechanically towards the hall, hugging herself once again. Something in her always changed when El’s grandma came up, and observing the transformation always put Eleanor on edge.

Filled with that strange sense of dread, El ghosted after her towards the front door where she found her father, for once, silent. He held the paper in his hands and stared at it, eyes drifting glassily from the battered old documents to the man in front of him, and back again.

“Leslie,” he breathed, as El’s mother reached his elbow, turning to her with wide, blank, watery eyes, entirely lost _. “Leslie.”_

She looked at her husband searchingly, laying a shaking, fearful hand on his arm. “What is it?”

He didn’t answer, but turned back to the stranger at the door who really did look _infuriatingly_ familiar, only Eleanor still couldn’t place him at all. She hung back in the hallway and watched him gaze at her mother as if he couldn’t quite believe the scene. “Hello,” he said with quiet trepidation, fingers whitening again the curve of the felt hat he held to his chest. “My name is Samuel Layton. I’m very sorry to—”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” El’s father said. Samuel Layton quickly shut his mouth, eyes darting flightily between the two of them. “Don’t be ridiculous,” her father murmured again, to himself more than to the other man. “You’re _here._ This is my wife, Leslie.” Leslie held out her hand to shake Samuel’s, but the boy just stared. El’s father turned to Leslie and looked down at the paper in his hand. “Shirley, he… _Samuel…_ he had this.”

“What is it?” Leslie asked, taking it slowly from her husband while Eleanor watched on, intrigued, heart hammering. Something important was happening, but she didn’t know what it was. She couldn’t even hazard a proper guess. Her father was in shock—that much was clear—but whether it was welcome news or catastrophic she couldn’t begin to tell. She wiped her paint-covered forearms clean on the thighs of her patchy overalls as she eyed her mother intently.

“I wondered,” Samuel blurted, something pleading in his eyes, “that is, I _hoped…_ I hoped it might mean something to you.”

El’s mother looked questioningly at her husband, who nodded reassuringly, and then unfolded the bundle and began to read.

 _“‘4 July 1945…’”_ Leslie’s head shot up again, startled, fingers tightening on the paper. Her husband curled a firm arm around her waist and nodded again. She looked down at the paper and read desperately on, mouthing the words silently. El couldn’t read her lips from where she was standing behind the three at the door, but she stared anyway, trying to piece together what was happening. It didn’t seem like news about her grandma, but if it wasn’t that then El was hopelessly lost. Her mother poured all of her attention into reading the letter, consuming it like oxygen, like it was her purpose on Earth, until she stumbled upon something so big it robbed her of her composure, or perhaps just until the gravity well around the huddle on the doorstep pulled her in, and her fragile chest seized.

“Oh, god!” Leslie cried, and broke off with an all consuming sob, a gasp of air that racked her body, shuddering through her from head to foot as her eyes jerked towards Samuel on the doorstep. The paper fell from her numb fingers to the ground as her husband tried to pull her close, but she wouldn’t turn from the boy. “Samuel! You’re called _Samuel.”_ She spoke as if she knew of him somehow, only she hadn’t known his name. Like the name Samuel—a common name, a family name—was some kind of relief to her. 

“Sam,” he said.

_“Sam.”_

Bursting with curiosity, El darted forward and crouched to the ground, snatching the paper up almost unnoticed as her parents and the stranger shared some kind of peculiar understanding. Putting the papers back together, she began to devour the writing. It was a letter, a very old letter, dated from the mid-40s, during the war. She didn’t recognise the name of the place of writing, but it had to be somewhere in another part of the world. As she read, Eleanor’s confusion deepened. Her eyes darted across the lines of leaden scrawl, punctuated over the years since it had been written with splashes of water that discoloured the paper and distorted the etchings, smears of dirt obscuring some of the words and brown stains that might be coffee or tea or perhaps something wholly more disturbing. It was a missive, a final letter to a loved one, penned on what the writer seemed sure was the eve of her death. _Her death._

The letter was signed _‘Leslie Barbara Knope.’_

It didn’t make any sense. There had to be another branch of the family, another Leslie Knope, an aunt or a third cousin or some relative who had been a war nurse, because this didn’t make any sense at all. Eleanor took a step forward, and then another heavier step, and then another, boots echoing on the hardwood floor as she closed the distance, standing right behind her mother who jumped and turned and jumped again at the sight of El so close to her. But Eleanor wasn’t looking at her mother or even at her father; she trained her narrowed eyes on the man at the door. “Who are you?” she demanded.

No one answered, and El looked blankly from her shaking mother to gaping Sam. Suddenly, she placed him: her mother’s soft blonde curls, her own dreamy blue eyes, the cut of his jaw and shape of his mouth so like her father’s, and she looked the truth in the face for one moment before about-turning and deciding, with conviction, that it just couldn’t be. She turned her focus to the letter in her hand, the one from some godforsaken place in the middle of the war when her mom had been safe, in Indiana, making candy, waiting for her father’s return. “And what the hell is this, mom? This isn’t yours.”

Leslie struggled to keep her voice steady. “Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not. This is a war letter! You weren’t in the war.”

“Sweetie, we’ve been trying to work out how to tell you…" She hugged her elbows and bit her lip wretchedly, almost vibrating with anxiety. Whatever she was about to say had to be big, had to be important. Might be life-changing. Eleanor hadn't seen her like this before and everything in her was screaming with impatience as to the _why_ of it all. “If I could corroborate the account, I was hoping to announce…”

“Tell me what? Announce _what?”_

“Well," Leslie said, taking a deep, fortifying breath. “I _was_ in the war.”

Eleanor let out a strangled laugh. “You can’t have been.”

“Honey…” her father tried again, but El shrugged him off, turning on her mother.

“No, mom, it’s not… it’s not possible. You were in Pawnee and you worked at the factory and that’s why we always get Sweetums—”

“El,” her mother said gently, but firmly, “I wasn’t in Pawnee. I left Pawnee in 1941, and I never worked at Sweetums.”

Eleanor looked from one parent to the other and laughed, the way a person laughs at a joke before quite getting the punchline, not wanting to look foolish and knowing that understanding is just a second away.

But understanding didn’t come, and her parents didn’t laugh. Sam looked between the three of them, still suspended in his own awed disbelief. Her mother wiped her eyes and something serious, even nervous, made itself at home in the depth of her gaze. El bit her lip as her stomach began to drop slowly, like sinking into quicksand.

It didn’t make sense. Her mother had gone to Pawnee when the US had joined the war, to stay safe, and to help with the war effort. She made candy. They always had Sweetums candy at home and El had grown up listening to her mom’s stories from the factory. 

Her father looked at her with concern. “Sam was born in Pawnee,” he said softly, “in 1941.”

Again, Eleanor chose to ignore the familiar stranger, who jumped at the sound of his name, and latched instead onto another part of what her father had said—birth— _her birth, her parents' wedding, her mother's jokes—_ and suddenly she placed a few pieces together only to wish, with all of her heavy, twisting heart, that she hadn’t.

“I was born in 1946!” she shouted. “In _March._ And you got married in—”

“August,” her mother said grimly.

“You told me it was a shotgun wedding.”

“It was.”

“After dad came home from war. In May.”

“Ellie…”

“No!” she shouted, furious at the pitiful plea in her mother’s voice, at the way she was trying to coo to her like she was a child, at the sinister yet entirely, sickeningly rational notion that she had been comprehensively lied to. “No! You… You’re saying you were _wherever the fuck this is_ in _July?”_

 _“Eleanor—”_ her mother pleaded, but El turned away, looking to her father for an explanation, for anything that could make any of it make sense and right the world again.

“So it wouldn’t matter if dad came home in May! Because you weren’t here! Where were you, mom? Where was dad?” She turned to her father desperately, searching for the ally she had always had in him, but he was grave and silent, still looking, dumbstruck, between his wife and the boy Sam Layton. “Dad?”

He turned to her wordlessly, pained and apologetic in his deafening, horrible silence, and looked back to Leslie with a question in his eyes.

“…Dad?”

In the distance a door opened and closed again as their neighbour, a wispy grey widow, padded outside, her long neck tilted curiously towards the scene. Her father didn't seem to have heard the noise. He was far off, lost in the long-drawn looks he shared with his wife and the stranger, washed away in some profound exchange that Eleanor wasn't part of and didn't understand. “Dad?”

She looked despairingly at her father and finally fell silent as her fingers grew loose around the paper in her hands, hot tears welling in her eyes. After a moment, he turned to her and quietly reached for the letter, drawing it gently away from her, passing it back to Leslie, who stared at it as if she held an impossible artefact, bewilderment dawning anew on her face like she, too, was lost and left out. Like she had realised she was missing something.

“How did you get this?” she whispered, raising her eyes to Sam, still standing there in the midst of this chaos he couldn't begin to understand. But _something_ kept him there, perhaps the same question on Leslie's lips, perhaps a simple refusal to go again, now that he had come.

“I don’t exactly know,” he said, stricken, but intrigued all the same. “It was hand-delivered, I think. It wasn’t postmarked; I only found it in the mailbox. I suppose someone must have left it.”

Leslie shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

“This was with it,” he added, and passed Leslie another piece of clean, modern notepaper with a couple of lines of scrawl on it. Eleanor craned to read over her mother’s shoulder and made out some of the words:

_‘She is alive, and living in Chicago.’_

“It wasn’t signed,” Sam said, with a regretful shrug, but it didn’t seem to matter; there was clearly something significant about it all the same, because El’s mother stared at it like it was a desert oasis. Like a mirage.

“That isn’t possible,” she said flatly, looking at her husband. His gaze was fixed on Leslie, concerned and equivocal and maybe a little hopeful. She shook her head. “Samuel, it’s not possible. It’s impossible.”

El's father frowned. “Is it?”

“Yes. _Yes,_ it’s impossible.” Leslie took a deep breath, mustered all the composure she could, and said, matter-of-factly: “He’s dead.”

Her husband took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Then why does young Sam have that letter?”


	2. Chapter One: Leslie

**Chicago, December 1941**

The sixth of December was the last day anyone would ask Leslie to pretend life was normal for a long, long time.

It was a bright, peaceful afternoon. Cadillacs trundled lazily along the Chicago streets as ladies in skirts and hats and sateen gloves lingered in front of shop windows, chattering and trading prized information about bachelors and textile patterns as they waited for their men to finish work. Leslie pressed her palm to the glass in front of her and gazed longingly at the dress behind it—a simple, princess cut piece with a V shaped neckline, sewn from navy blue fabric in the loveliest pattern. She had thought it was polka dots the first time she saw it, walking down the street with her mother, but on closer inspection she noticed the print was really an endless, beautiful string of pearls. It was the first object Leslie had really found herself _wanting_ after she returned from Pawnee.

She liked to imagine herself wearing it, to picture what her life might be like if she were the kind of woman who owned a dress like that. She’d be sophisticated, but not straight-laced. Rebellious, but respectable. She’d smile and laugh and when she’d speak people would listen. 

“You’ll want to put on a few pounds yet, darling, if you want to fill that dress out.” Leslie jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice.

“Mom,” Leslie gasped, clutching her elbows. “I didn’t realise you were back.”

“Well, I am, and we need to get going. We don’t want to keep the men waiting.” Her mother’s hand closed around her elbow and pulled her from the display. Leslie closed her eyes as her mother dragged her down the street to the restaurant and tried to calm her juddering breath. Standing outside were her father and a young man she’d never met before. The stranger wore a jacket that was too nice for the occasion. Her father wore his usual good-natured frown.

“Frank Oldfield,” Robert said, after greeting them, “this is our daughter, Leslie.”

“Miss Knope,” said Frank, taking her gloved hand and bringing it to his lips. “A pleasure.” 

“Yes, a pleasure,” Leslie echoed. 

The restaurant was small and intimate, lit dimly and seemed to cater mostly to couples. Some young and courting, some married for years. Leslie understood exactly why her mother had brought her here and knew her father had probably been helpless to stop it. He kept shooting her apologetic looks over entrees and refilled her wine glass each time she drained it.

“Frank has just recently graduated Northwestern and taken up with Reynolds,” Marlene said, while they waited for the main course.

“Oh,” said Leslie, toying with her potatoes. “That must be interesting. Investment brokerage?”

“Well, would you look at that!” Frank remarked. “She’s smart.”

“I am. I studied at Northwestern, too.”

“For a while,” Marlene added, “before she got ill.”

“Yes,” Leslie said, barely concealing the bitterness in her tone, “but being home in Pawnee for the summer was exactly what I wanted for my recovery, mama. I feel just wonderful.”

Her mother gave her a dark, warning glance and took a hurried sip of wine. “And I’m glad every day, sweetheart.” She turned back to Frank. “Leslie hasn’t returned to school, though.”

“No? I suppose there’s not much use for it anyway. A woman hardly needs to be educated, if she has someone to care for her.”

Leslie looked from Marlene, smiling genially and nodding, to Robert, draining a tumbler of scotch with purposeful silence, and felt nothing. She felt like a ghost watching the scene, watching her mother barter her life away and her father standing by as it happened. She could even see herself, as if she weren’t in her own body at all. She saw her own face, painted ivory and crimson like Marlene liked it, blonde curls shining in the lamplight. Her blue eyes, wide and dull. Her lips curled in that pathetic, inoffensive smile that pleased her mother so.

She could scream, she thought, and no one would notice. She could jump on the table and smash the crockery and spill wine and whisky and brandy all over them and not a single one of them would look up. Not even her.

Leslie squeezed her eyes shut and exhaled and when she opened them she found herself back at the table, looking through her own eyes again, in the middle of the same miserable conversation. She looked down at her hands, clenching and unclenching her fingers in her lap, and she bit the inside of her lip until she tasted copper.

***

The next day, Japan bombed Pearl Harbour.

“I suppose we’ll join the war now,” Marlene said, matter-of-factly, after the news broadcast.

“I’m sure we will.”

“Oh, darling.” Her mother shook her head. “What do you know about politics?”

Leslie shrugged and walked to her father’s study, pulling her shawl around her body.

*

_The classroom is dark and cramped, but there’s an air of grandeur about it all the same. Rows of benches rise sharply up from the ground, staggering up towards the ceiling at the back of the room, and at the front there’s a large wooden desk standing imposingly before a black chalkboard. Leslie grips her books to her chest and spins around, marvelling at the shine of the wood in the low light and the musky smell of old mahogany and the promise of knowledge._

_She chooses a spot in the front row and sits down with a breathless reverence. The building has stood for a hundred years. Who knows how many great men have sat here and dreamt of what it is to live and to serve? Her heart swells with pride and anticipation, and she hums happily as she sets her books out in front of her, running her fingers over the covers as if she can’t quite believe they’re_ hers. _But they are. Marlene had agreed she could go to college when they moved to Chicago and Leslie has her theories on why her mother allowed it_ _—but, really, the reason is unimportant. What matters is that she’s here._

_The classroom fills, slowly, as young men scramble up the stairs to the heights of the back of the room rather than sit in the front row beside her. The professor huffs about at the centre desk and sorts his papers, about to start the lecture, but before he can speak there’s an ear-splitting SLAM as a boy around Leslie’s age throws the door open and steps inside. He has an easy smile and one book under his arm instead of half a dozen and barely seems to notice as the door crashes shut again and everyone turns to look at the source of the noise. “Sorry, sir,” he says. “I got a little lost.” He strolls inside as if all he had to answer for was slight tardiness and takes a seat next to Leslie, eyeing her giant stack of books and carefully ruled notepaper._

_“Well, you’re clearly here for a husband, then,” he smiles, ignoring the professor’s indignant stare._

_The room is quiet and all eyes are still on the newcomer, and she really shouldn’t make things worse, but Leslie can’t help it. She laughs. “You sound just like my mother,” she whispers._

_“Oh, good. I’m off to a great start.”_

_Leslie notices the history professor’s furious glower and shoots the boy a glare._ “Shut up,” _she hisses, but she still can’t help but smile._

*

Robert was at his desk when Leslie walked in, still listening to the coverage on his radio.

“Will you go?” she asked.

“To war?”

Leslie curled her fingers into her shawl. “Yes.” 

Her father sighed and looked up at her sadly. “Well, I suppose there’s nothing else for it, is there? Enlist or be drafted, now, I should think.”

“It’s about time,” Leslie said, taking a step forward. “I hate that we’ve done nothing for so long. It takes this for us to care.” Leslie strode across the room and sunk down on the sofa opposite Robert’s desk. She picked up a miniature globe and spun it around on its axis, watching the earth turn and turn and turn and turn as it stood still in her hand. “I hate not being able to do anything. I’d enlist, if I could.”

“And I’m thankful you can’t. It’s a very serious thing.”

“I know that.”

“Your grandfather fought in the great war, you know. The losses…” He looked out the window and stared through the glass without seeing. “The losses were immense. Even for those who lived.”

“I know,” Leslie said again, stilling the globe. She looked at the outline of the United States resting under her thumb. “I know what loss is.”

***

The house was silent except for the ticking of the clock on the mantel and the sound of the President talking about infamy and unbounding determination and inevitable triumph, so help us God.

Leslie, Robert and Marlene all stared at the wireless, unblinking, imagining the war and the future it would bring each of them. Leslie saw years stretching before her, wasting away, useless, while braver people lived and fought for something. Marlene stood by the wireless, framed by the family portraits that hung against the pale lemon walls, listening with her arms crossed neatly in front of her chest and her mouth set in a line of steely determination. Robert sat at the dining table, inert, a newspaper hanging loosely in his hands as he stared at his cup of coffee.

“Well,” Marlene said, after the broadcast ended. She looked at Leslie. “That’s as expected.”

Leslie pulled her legs to her chest, making herself smaller in the corner of the sofa under her shawl. She cast her eyes down at her fingers, linked around her knees, and carefully avoided her mother’s gaze. “Yes,” she murmured. 

“Your father’s going to enlist.” Marlene glanced at Robert. He lowered his newspaper and pressed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

“Yes,” he said.

“I know,” Leslie said.

“There’ll be work to be done here, Leslie,” Marlene continued. “Since all the men will be going off to fight. You can’t act like an invalid forever, darling. It’s been months.”

“Yes, mother.”

“They’ll be doing their bit. Your father will be fighting for our country. So will that _boy.”_

Leslie buried her face against her shawl and said nothing.

She didn’t want to think about him, but she didn’t want to do anything _but_ think of him, either. About everything that was lost now. Everything that was gone.

She wanted to go back to Northwestern University, to days when she sat in the sunlight on the lawns, when she would laugh and read poetry and history and philosophy and when she had dreams—big ones, grand dreams that could change the world. She wanted to go back to before _this,_ to before she was drugged and mugged and robbed blind. To before the hospital. She wanted her body back, wanted to feel strong and whole and _alive._

The newspaper sighed as Robert dropped it on the table. There was a plunk as he set the coffee mug down and footsteps on the floorboards, and then the sound of her mother’s familiar, fed-up exhale. “Honey,” her father said gently. “She’s still grieving.”

“No one died, Robert.”

“No, sweetheart, but she still needs time.”

Leslie looked up from her blanket to see her father gazing at her over her mother’s head, concern clouding his face. 

“She’s had time,” Marlene sighed. “And plenty of it.” She put her hands on her hips, exhaling again in frustration. “I don’t know what to do with her, Robert. It’s time she made herself useful. God knows everyone else is.”

Her parents often did this. They talked about her like she wasn’t there, guessing at what she needed and despairing of her failings. Sometimes Leslie ignored them and dreamt of her college days long past, or the futures she might have had if things had been different. Sometimes she listened to what her mother thought of her and tried not to cry. Sometimes she got up and left the room just to see if they would notice. 

But now Leslie was still, alert and wide-eyed. She sat reeling as something came to her, as she took a half-formed thought from yesterday and her mother’s acid words, and moulded the two into something of a real idea. A wild, bold idea, one that bordered on madness as much as brilliance. She couldn’t be here any more. Leslie knew that. She couldn’t be this small, fragile, broken person with nothing to live for. She could do _something._ Even her mother had said so. Really she’d almost implored it, in a left-handed kind of way: _‘It’s time she made herself useful. God knows everyone else is.’_

Leslie could go to war.

It wasn’t so crazy, really. She’d studied wars in her history classes and she’d read about women going to fight before, disguised as men. She wasn’t worried about the danger. If she was honest, she found it exciting—the idea of fighting for liberty and humanity with her own body and soul. Leslie had had something to lose, once, but not any more. There was nothing left for her here. Not in Chicago, nor in Pawnee, maybe not even in the whole of America.

But still, she was alive. There was still something she believed in. And she still had something left to give. 

***

Leslie wasn’t much of a seamstress, but she managed to alter her father’s old clothes well enough to avoid rousing suspicion—at least at first glance. She sheared off her hair, dressed herself in trousers and a shirt and coat, and when she looked at herself in the mirror she was shocked almost to tears by her own reflection. For the first time in more than a year, there was no dead-eyed woman looking back at her. In her place was a scrappy, eager boy. If she’d had doubts, they vanished the moment she laid eyes on him, this stranger with life in his face. Leslie braced herself against the bathroom sink and stared at herself in wonder, running her hand through her cropped hair with a strange, shy smile.

She left home before the sun came up and didn’t leave a note. She felt sorry for her father, but she found herself smiling again at the idea of her mother discovering she was missing and that it was her own words that drove her to it.

_You were right about something, mother. It’s time to move on._

Leslie thought she might be one of the first to enlist, but when she saw the line stretching longer than a football field she gathered every other man in the city had had the same idea.

Chicago winters were cold, and colder before sunrise. She shuddered and pulled the giant woollen coat around her, shifting on aching feet to keep warm as a cruel December wind ripped down the street. The line stretched for blocks and blocks as hundreds of men stood waiting, undeterred by the cold. Her fingers moved clumsily, lost in the excess fabric of still-too-long sleeves as she tugged her cap down over her ears and turned the collar of the coat up over her exposed neck. The feeling of freezing air on bare skin without her curtain of soft curls was strange and it sent a chill running through her.

The line grew longer, and Leslie lost her place in it two times when she needed to use the bathroom. Unlike the men, she couldn’t just relieve herself in the bushes. The wind wailed and chapped and burned, yet there was something potent in it, a thick concoction of determination and anxiety and purpose that bound all the scores of men together and made the hard outdoors bearable as they waited. The men on the streets began to chatter and joke as the line waned and the sun sank in the sky. Leslie listened with a quiet smile, but she didn’t speak to anyone. She kept her eyes on the ground and her arms curled around her stomach, taking her own silent comfort in the feeling of camaraderie around her, the knowledge that no one knew exactly what they were signing up for yet they were all determined to do their bit all the same.

She had lost a lot, but she still had something left to give. She could be part of something else, something bigger and more important than her own little life and its sadnesses. 

This war mattered. It mattered a great deal, to a great many people. And like Leslie, these men believed in doing something.

The sun was below the horizon before she got inside the building, but the station showed no sign of shutting down for the night. She took off her cap and, inside the cramped space, she really looked around at all the men older and taller than her, at men who were _men_ and not teenage girls in their fathers’ clothes.

She bit her lip, allowing herself to second-guess her scheme for the first time. If she could make it to the base and begin training, by the time they really started looking at her as an individual and not just one of a pack of new recruits, and they noticed she was scrawny and tiny and high-pitched, Leslie was fairly certain that by then she’d have made it too far for the officers to be willing to send away a soldier with a steady hand and better aim.

But this bit, getting in to begin with—this was risky, up to a chance encounter with a sergeant and nothing more. And for all Leslie had a thousand ideas about how she’d survive once she got to the base and beyond, she didn’t have a clue what she would do if they turned her away now. She certainly couldn’t go home. She swiped her sweaty palms against her trousers.

Inside the building, the line moved more quickly. Behind a long table sat an array of sergeants who each took turns hollering for the next recruit. Leslie’s nerves grew as she waited to get to the front. She watched the sergeants, trying to work out which one seemed kindest, or least interested, or most impatient, and hoping that she would be called by the one who’d give her the best chance of progressing.

“NEXT!” 

Leslie swallowed hard and clutched her cap in front of her to still her trembling hands as she approached the desk. The man behind it barely glanced at her as he flipped to a new page in the record book.

“Full name?”

“I’m Robert Leslie Knope.” Her heart pounded in her chest as she watched the man write her father’s name. “Junior,” she added, nervously. “But people call me Leslie.”

“I don’t give a shit what people call you, kid,” the man said without looking up. “Date of birth?”

Leslie swallowed hard but she didn’t flinch. “January eighteenth, 1922, sir,” she said evenly. She saw him roll his eyes, but she held herself together. She answered the rest of his questions with her eyes up and her tone steady. The sergeant didn’t look at her once.

“Next of kin?” he asked, finally.

“No, sir.” She clenched her fist around her father’s cap. “None.”

“Right.” He struck a line across the last section of the form. “Well, that’s it then, sunshine,” he said, turning the page. “Welcome to the goddamn US Army. Truck’s that way.” The sergeant jerked his thumb to the right, then finally raised his head and frowned at the sight of Leslie still standing in front of him as she breathed a long sigh of relief. “Well, what the fuck are you still doing here, roadrunner? Don’t see what you look so happy for. NEXT!”


	3. Chapter Two: Leslie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're here looking for the latest chapter - it's a prologue! Check Chapter 1. <3
> 
> Once again, a million thanks to Meg and Kate for their endless and generous help.

**Fort Ainsworth, December 1941**

The cattle car jolted and shuddered over uneven ground, throwing its occupants into each other and battering them up against the walls. Leslie lost count of how many times she’d hit her head against the grated windows or how often she’d had to shove another man off her after he’d fallen on her. Even in the winter, the body heat of dozens of people piled on top of each other in the cramped metal compartment left them all overheated and miserable. Some of the men had spoken a little at the beginning, but it had grown too hot and too loud and everyone had long since given up trying to hold a real conversation. There would be time for that when they reached the base. The air was thick and putrid with the stench of sweat, and although her head kept ringing and aching from slamming into the window bars, Leslie had to be grateful for her access to fresh air.

Only the drill sergeants had managed to stay upright—and not just upright, but standing. They made it look effortless. The nearest one—Middlebrooks—had one hand clasped around a metal rung and the other on his rifle as he shouted down at them. 

“Listen here, you little fuckers,” he hollered, “you’re not boys anymore. You are soldiers. I don’t care who you are or where you came from. You left your mamas. You left your sweethearts. You left your kids. Whoever you were, that person is gone. You are a US soldier. These are your brothers now. And when you’re told to do something, you do it. You don’t ask questions. You don’t hesitate. You say, ‘Yes, drill sergeant,’ and you fucking do it. Do you understand?” There were muffled murmurs of assent from the men as Middlebrooks began to prowl the length of the truck, eyeing his men sharply. Leslie watched the way he moved with interest. She saw the way he kept his knees bent and placed all his weight on his toes, absorbing the shock as the cattle car rattled over rocky ground. The sergeant came to a stop in front of her and crouched down to her level, bracing his arm on the bars of the window by her head. “I SAID, DO YOU UNDERSTAND, PRIVATE?” Middlebrooks roared, spraying her with spit.

Leslie fought to keep her face blank and met his eye, swallowing. “Yes, drill sergeant.”

He stood and looked around, pointing at her. “This runt’s a goddamn genius! DO THE REST OF YOU UNDERSTAND?”

“YES, DRILL SERGEANT!”

They drove through the night and into the early hours of the next morning. Sometime after the sky had begun to lighten but before the sun broke the horizon, the truck ground to a final, halting stop at the bottom of a steep hill. The doors opened and Middlebrooks got back on his feet, pointing at the exit. “GET OUT OF THIS TRUCK!” He grabbed the nearest man and hauled him to his feet, pulling him down the steps. “Everyone get out of the truck! NOW!” When the men didn’t move fast enough, the sergeants grabbed them by the upper arms and dragged them to their feet, throwing them off the truck onto sparse, wet grass. Leslie watched through the window as she waited to get to the front. Middlebrooks stood by the front door of the bus, plucking the recruits’ belongings from their arms and throwing them in a pile while he barked orders. 

“Get over there and do some push ups!”

Leslie almost laughed until she saw the sergeant was serious and the men obeyed, dropping to the ground where they stood. Middlebrooks grabbed her and flung her out of the truck. She landed in a puddle, cold mud splashing up her trousers and seeping into her shoes. The freezing air and colder ground was a shock after the sweltering humidity inside the cattle car. Leslie picked herself up and began to press her body off the ground with weak and trembling arms. Her stomach burned from the strain of keeping herself upright, but she didn’t let herself stop. “Beat your face, runt! You’ll see far worse than mud soon!” Middlebrooks shouted before he turned his attention to a large, breathless man.

The pushups lasted until everyone had gotten out of the truck, and then they were allowed to stand and collect their belongings before the sergeants had them line up in formation. They bellowed in the men's faces until some hyperventilated and others cried, but Leslie only stood there as a sergeant shouted at her to hold a bag above her head. Her arms screamed and she couldn’t keep the bag above her chest, much less above her head, but no matter what he said or how loud he screamed or how much spittle landed on her face, Leslie stood there impassively. Like stone, just like she had a thousand times before in her own house. Nothing the sergeant said could touch her.

Finally, the sergeants stepped back, their voices retreating to normal levels. They had everyone tidy themselves up and stand in formation, then instructed the group to run up the hill and a few miles beyond it to reach the base. The hill would have been rocky with loose dirt and looser gravel on a drier day, but now it was muddy and treacherous. Leslie struggled to keep pace, though she still fared better than the man Middlebrooks had turned on earlier, who was openly crying as he struggled through the mud. She was towards the back of the pack, but not last. One man to her left stumbled on the slick ground and Leslie shot out an arm to steady him, keep him on his feet. 

As they crested the hill and the base came into view in the distance, Middlebrooks began to chant. The sergeant called lines of song and the men echoed them back.

“Your momma was home when you left,” he sang.

_“Your right!”_

“Your papa was home when you left!”

_“Your right!”_

“And that was the reason you left!”

_“Your right!”_

There was a cool breeze on her face and fire in her arms and her legs and her belly as she worked her body hard to keep up and catch her breath and keep calling the lines back in time.

The song carried on the wind as the sun appeared over the compound in the distance and although her body ached, although her lungs burned, although she had no idea what was ahead of her, Leslie smiled.

***

The fort sat on tens of thousands of acres of land, stretching for miles and miles in every direction. After breaching the gates, they walked for what felt like miles more before finally arriving before an old stone garrison. Its sheet white walls rose some forty feet in the air, free of any of the blemishes that ought to come with age. It sat in the center of the base, stoutly commanding the smaller buildings around it like an old general. As they made their way through the grounds, Leslie wondered how she would ever learn her way around for the weeks she would be stationed here for training before being sent to some foreign land.

She had had no idea just how _huge_ the army was. She lost count of how many people she saw as she tried to fix landmarks in her mind; a big tower, a field of barbed wire, a fountain, even stables. The numbers of men must have added up to thousands, most of them with patches on their arms. Some insignia she recognised—sergeants, like Middlebrooks; privates, like her grandfather. Some were more ornate and must have belonged to ranks she was unfamiliar with, and others didn’t seem to relate to rank at all. Leslie recognised the important men immediately. They walked with a certain stiffness and an imposing air of authority.

They had been right about one thing: there was plenty of time for conversation on base. It seemed that none of the men had expected joining the army to come with quite so much paperwork, or quite so much standing around. Leslie and the other recruits passed their first day as soldiers in lineups with plenty of time to talk about mindless things and almost no privacy or opportunity to really get to know one another.

The pace was slow but always constant. She was always on her way somewhere and yet never really seemed to arrive. She was sent to an interview with an officer whose name and rank she forgot almost immediately after leaving the room, and after that she was given a psychological assessment, and after that a medical examination.

Leslie hadn’t allowed herself to worry about it until she was waiting in line, and now that the moment was imminent all she could do was stand there, paralysed by anxiety, playing out a thousand scenarios in her head. By the time it was her turn Leslie felt sick to her stomach, but she knew her best chance of making it through undiscovered was to act as normally as possible. She took in a lungful of air and breathed it out slowly, wiping sweaty palms on the sides of her pants. Then she stepped into the office with her head high.

The doctor sat at a small desk and he raised a querying eyebrow at her as she stepped into the room. “You’re awful little, Private Knope,” he remarked.

Leslie tilted her chin up and met his eye steadily as her heart began to race. “Yes, sir.”

He pursed his lips and tapped his pen against the desk, looking her over. Leslie put her hands behind her back and wrung her fingers nervously. He might strip her. She had heard some men were being made to take their clothes off. Or he might not even bother. He might just recognise her soft jaw and smooth skin and unbroken voice and call one of the sergeants to put her back on a bus out of here.

The doctor sighed and wiped his forehead ponderously. “You know what you’re doing, kid?”

She dug her nails into her palms behind her back. “Yes, sir.”

“And you are sure about it?”

“Yes, sir.”

The doctor clicked his pen, sighing again. “Alright then.”

He checked her over quickly and seemed to find her vitals and reflexes satisfactory. She sat silently as he scribbled her information down on his notepad, wondering if she had really made it through so easily. Finishing his notes, the doctor rose from his chair and crossed the room slowly, crouching down at one of the cupboards set against the back wall. He pulled out a large compression bandage and placed it on the examination bench, then looked back at Leslie. “I’m going to fetch a cup of coffee,” he said kindly, walking to the door. “Please send the next boy in when you’re done here.”

Leslie swallowed, eyeing the bandage. “Thank you, sir.” He nodded and let himself out of the office. The lock clicked shut behind him and Leslie exhaled, letting her eyes fall closed for a moment as she sent her silent thanks into the ether.

She undressed quickly, removing the flimsy headscarf she had wrapped around her breasts and replacing it with the bandage. She fastened it with the little metal clip and looked down at her chest, bouncing experimentally on her toes. There was no movement. She jumped and felt a little bounce, but nothing really uncomfortable. Leslie was fairly sure that it wouldn’t be noticeable under the thick fabric of the uniforms she’d be collecting soon and sent another wordless _thank you._ Relieved, she pulled her shirt back on and redressed, stuffing the old headscarf into her pocket. She’d have to find somewhere discreet to dispose of it later.

Leslie went from the medical unit to another building halfway across the base where she was fitted for her uniforms—she was fortunate that they had too many recruits and too little time for everyone to undress and redress, so measurements were taken over their clothes—and, after the fitting, she had her head shaved.

She watched in awe as the last golden locks of hair fell from her head and ran her hand over the stubble. Leslie thought it would feel prickly, like her father’s five o’clock shadow, but it was soft and fuzzy under her hand. The room was huge, full of men being shorn like sheep, and there was no mirror to look in—but Leslie didn’t need to see herself to know she liked it. The feeling alone made her giddy in a way she never would have expected. It felt liberating.

With her head freshly shaved and a list of sizes in hand, Leslie was sent back across the base to collect her uniforms. She waited for a long time in line with men she hadn’t seen before, making the same small talk as she had made four times already that day. The more places she went, the fewer people she recognised, and Leslie began to understand just how many people were pouring into the base. There must have been dozens of trucks and hundreds of recruits arriving just today, and there would only be more as the weeks went on. 

Leslie really was one of the first.

Eventually she reached the front of the line and a sergeant took the list of sizes from her. He hollered numbers at another soldier who was taking orders from five men at once, mechanically picking items of clothing from bins set along the wall and putting them neatly into piles. Leslie was handed a large pile of uniforms and shoved towards a huge changeroom to the right, packed with men in varying states of dress and undress.

Casting a furtive glance around the area and finding everyone preoccupied, she was fairly sure she could slip away, unnoticed, to change in the bathroom instead. To her relief, the stalls had locks. She tucked herself inside one and pulled off her old clothes, toeing off her shoes, carefully folding her father’s shirt on the lid of the toilet as his trousers pooled around her feet. There were more bins outside for their old clothes, now ruined by mud and sweat. The idea of throwing her father’s clothes away made her terribly sad. She folded the trousers neatly on top of the shirt, pulling her headscarf from the pocket. Running her hand over her bald head again, she realised she didn’t want to throw it out either. She liked the feel of stubble, liked the sensation of the air against her head and found it freeing, but the scrap of chiffon in her hand was all that was left of who she used to be. And she didn’t want to forget. Not entirely.

Her heart ached as she ran her thumb over the silky fabric, remembering days when she had worn it over her hair and tied around her neck and when she had been so effortlessly feminine. It was only an accessory, then. An afterthought. But here, it was more. It was a reminder of who she really was. Leslie blinked back tears and decided she would keep it, tying the scarf loosely around the bandage on her chest. She ran her hands over her stubbly head again and smiled ruefully as she reached for her new clothes. She pulled the uniform on piece by piece, and when she emerged from the stall and looked in the bathroom mirror she saw not a sad girl or an eager boy, but a real soldier.

She would earn patches for her sleeves, she would have her name sewn onto her shirt. This uniform would grow with her, identify her, show her achievements and her place in the world. For the first time, it all felt _real._ Like she might come to belong here.

By the time the day was over she was too tired to eat, much less talk to anyone at dinner or even to bother meeting her bunkmates. She fell into her assigned lower bunk and slept like the dead for four hours instead of her usual three, rising well before dawn to steal a shower in secrecy before the day began.

The second day went on like the first: more lines, more waiting, more tasks at opposite ends of the base. Her new boots chaffed and rubbed at the blisters on her feet and it became harder and harder to stand still in the endless lines. They learned it would be a couple of weeks before training really began and Leslie started studying her new handbook as she waited in line, hopping from foot to foot as she scoured the pages for tips on exercise regimes she might use to build her strength and stamina after discovering just how weak she really was. 

By late afternoon her body ached worse than it had the day before, but she was less tired than she had been and she found she was starving. 

It was at dinner that night that Leslie made her first real friend: a cheerful, bright-eyed man who introduced himself in the lineup. “I’m Private Traeger,” he announced, blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “And you’re…”

“Knope,” Leslie said. She had to remind herself to use her last name.

“Private Knope!” Traeger repeated. “I really couldn’t be more pleased to meet you. When did you arrive?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“Yesterday morning! I got here the day before. Are you from Illinois?” Traeger asked, piling food onto his plate. “Indiana?”

“Illinois. Well, Indiana originally, but I was living in Chicago.”

“I’m from Wisconsin.”

“Neat.” Leslie grabbed a bread roll. “So did you enlist?”

“Yes! Did you?”

Leslie nodded, now at the end of the line and searching for somewhere she might be able to sit, but before she could come to a decision Traeger gripped her by the shoulder and towed her over to a table of people, alternately waving at them and pointing at her with a huge grin. His friends (or so Leslie gathered) raised curious eyebrows as Traeger sat her down in the midst of them and clambered over the bench to sit next to her. “Everyone, meet Private Knope. He enlisted in Chicago. Isn’t that wonderful!” A couple of the people smiled at her. 

“Private Knope,” he said, gesturing around the table, “this is Private Dwyer, Private Gergich, Private Haverford, Private Saperstein and Private Wyatt!” 

“You just said the word ‘private’ about a thousand times,” Haverford muttered as Leslie looked around the group. They were mostly men—boys, really—around Leslie’s age; Traeger was a few years older, perhaps in his late twenties, but Gergich was greying at the temples. Dwyer had the look of a brand new puppy at Christmas—not quite out of the box he came in, a little perplexed about the occasion, but impossibly thrilled to be in his new home nonetheless. Haverford was small and had a good-natured kind of bitterness around him, clearly not happy about his circumstances but willing to joke his way through it. It was clear immediately that he and Saperstein had known each other before coming to base. Leslie recognised Gergich as the man who’d struggled with pushups that morning and asked how he had already met Traeger.

“Aw jeez,” Gergich sighed. “Well, I was getting smoked again—”

“Smoked?”

“It’s when you piss off the brass and they make you exercise,” Dwyer said through a mouthful of bread. “You know, they come up real close and they yell, ‘beat your face, Private!’ Or, ‘grab some real estate you worthless motherfuckin’ maggot!’ That kind of thing.” 

“Oh,” Leslie said, remembering what Middlebrooks had said to her when she got off the bus. She frowned. “What if they smoke you for no reason?”

Dwyer laughed and then, when he saw the confusion on her face, realised Leslie wasn’t joking. “Oh,” he said, very seriously. “Well that’s just drill sergeants being drill sergeants.”

“And what’s the brass?” 

“Higher ups.”

Leslie remembered another term she’d heard in the halls and figured Dwyer might know what that meant, too. “And what’s a pogue?”

Saperstein jumped in. “It’s P.O.G., son!”

“Personnel other than grunt,” Haverford said. “Safety almost guar-an-teed.”

“And it’s my fuuuuuuuture!”

Traeger blinked. “I thought it meant useless,” he said blankly. 

Leslie looked at Dwyer. He had his mouth full, but he shrugged and nodded as if to say ‘well, you’re not totally wrong.’

“How do you know it’s your future?” she asked. “Do you know where you’re getting assigned already? I thought none of us knew.”

“My father’s a Lieutenant Colonel,” Saperstein said, puffing his chest, “so I’m _pretty_ sure I’ll get a good posting.”

Leslie didn’t know much about the command structure of the army, but the way Dwyer snorted made her think Saperstein didn’t have quite the understanding he thought he did.

“Anyway,” Gergich said quickly, “I was getting smoked again and Traeger—”

“No one cares, Gergich!” Haverford said.

“Knope asked,” the older man protested, sounding somewhat miffed.

 _“Anyway,”_ Haverford continued, turning to Dwyer, “how do you even know all this stuff? Didn’t you get here yesterday?”

Dwyer swallowed, mopping up the last of his stew with a corner of bread. “I had three brothers in the navy.”

Leslie tipped her head, wondering how they got out of the military when the country was on the brink of a war. “What are they doing now?”

“They were at Pearl Harbour.”

Dwyer’s words settled over them, slow and quiet, like a blanket of ash. They all fell silent. It had been easy to think only of the bigger picture, the large-scale destruction, the onslaught against the nation. To think about the act of terror and treachery, to know it had to be answered with a defiant shout and a show of ferocity and pride, to volunteer to be the ones answering.

It was another thing to understand. 

Leslie remembered that morning in her lounge room, listening to the newscast on the sofa with her shawl curled around her body, thinking of how the US might finally be induced to do the right thing by the millions who had been robbed of freedom and family and possessions and time and then, finally, sent to a chamber where the very air they breathed would be stolen from them. She remembered thinking, ‘about time.’ She remembered thinking of Pearl Harbour as a naval base, and the two thousand some casualties as figures. Leslie understood the scale of millions as an order of magnitude, something vast and beyond easy comprehension, that you had to _work_ to understand. She knew millions had been killed—were still being killed, more every day—in Europe, and she knew that it meant horror. Compared to a million, a thousand was small. A tiny fraction.

One one-thousandth of the horror. 

But now she looked at Dwyer and imagined his three brothers around him, and for the first time she saw the figures as real, solid people. She saw a thousand brothers and a thousand mothers and fathers and sisters and children whose men would never come home from Hawaii.

Millions had never seemed so huge.

Leslie and the others who had enlisted alongside her had spent the last few days swept up in the fantasy of duty to country, to humanity. The fantasy of doing justice. None of them had given much thought to the idea that they might very really be weeks from their own deaths, and the reminder was sobering.

“I’m very sorry,” Leslie said, meaning it. She knew it was inadequate, but it was all she could offer. 

When she looked up at the others, she saw Traeger was crying. “That is the most tragic thing I have ever heard. And you’re here.” 

“Yeah,” Dwyer said, with a sad resolve. “Well, you know. Make ’em proud.”

Traeger nodded solemnly. “We’ll all fight to make sure their sacrifice wasn’t in vain.”

There was dull thud to Leslie’s right, and she looked across the benchtop to see the other boy, who had been quiet until this point, with his arms braced tensely on the table, fists curled fingers down against the wood. He was glowering at Traeger in some kind of disbelief. _“Sac—”_ he began, wincing with the effort of holding himself back from explosion. “Are you joking, Traeger?” 

Traeger’s face fell in confusion. “No?”

“You can’t be serious. Thousands of men just got blown to smithereens, his own brothers, and you want to talk about sacrifice like there’s a point to that? Or any of this?”

Leslie looked sharply at Dwyer, caught in the crossfire and looking wounded without really understanding why. Traeger was beginning to mount an uncertain defence while the other boy—she had forgotten his name—sat in a dark, foreboding silence, temper rising. Neither Traeger nor the other boy even seemed to notice Dwyer was upset. Leslie’s chest grew heavy as she remembered the feeling of being invisible. She felt her heart sink like a rock down into her gut, felt her muscles tense. She got up and put her own hands heavily on the table, eyeing the boy opposite her.

“Can I have a second?” she said. “Right now?”

His dark eyes flicked to her. “I’m sorry?”

“I need to speak to you. Over there.”

She climbed over the bench clumsily, her muscles still weak and aching from the morning, and barely managed to get clear of the table without falling into Traeger. She stumbled as her boots pinched her aching feet. With some difficulty and a little luck, Leslie regained her composure and rounded the table, grabbing the boy by the shoulder. “Get up. Come on.” He shot her a mutinous look as she dragged him to his feet, evidently deciding it would cause less of a scene to allow her to tow him across the hall than it would to fight her off, even if he was much larger. Leslie spotted the promise of privacy behind a cart of dirty dishes at the side of the hall and herded him behind it.

Out of view, he pulled his arm free from her shaky grip and glared down at her. “What is your problem?”

“What’s _my…”_ Leslie gasped, furious. “Dwyer’s right there! You don’t just… you don’t just talk about someone as if they’re not right in front of you. Not about something like that,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice below the din in the rest of the hall. “They were his family! You can’t just let him grieve? What the hell is _your_ problem?”

“Yeah, his brothers _got blown up_ and he decides to join the fucking army? And Traeger wants to tell him he’s honouring them by throwing his own life away, like it’ll make it all mean something. But it doesn’t. They’re dead. They’re not going to be proud of him, _because they’re dead,_ and him dying won’t make them any less dead.”

“He knows that!” Leslie snapped. “But he can still honour their memory—you know, their spirit. Maybe it makes him feel like he has purpose.”

“I don’t see the honour in choosing to die needlessly.”

“That isn’t what I’m saying! And who’s to say any of us are going to die?”

He looked at her seriously. “I don’t know what the hell any of you are doing here when you had the choice.”

“Oh, now I see! You’re furious at all of us for having the guts to do something when you didn’t want to! You’d rather moralise while other people die, huh? Is that it?” His eyes flashed dangerously, but Leslie barrelled on, voice rising, planting herself firmly where she stood. “You know, I used to know someone like you. It was all moral philosophy and pacifism, but reality isn’t theoretical! This isn’t a thought experiment! People are dying in those awful camps and our choices are do something or do nothing, and if you’re not willing to do something then you’re either a coward or you’re evil, but either way you should be ashamed.” The boy stared at her, open mouthed. He looked as shocked as she felt; Leslie realised she was trembling as she took a long, heavy breath. All she could do was stare back at him. A long moment passed as Leslie’s breathing evened and the sharpest lines of tension ebbed from the boy’s shoulders. 

“Are you done?” His voice was deadened, all the more threatening for the calmness.

Leslie blinked. “Yes,” she said, folding her arms, recalling what she’d been so angry about in the first place as the adrenaline faded. “Are _you_ done?”

He put his hands on his hips. “Well, you’ve obviously got it all figured out.”

“Yes,” she bristled. “Well, just leave Dwyer alone.”

“Fine. I wouldn’t want him to taint him with my cowardice. Or my evil intentions. Whichever you’ve decided it is.”

Leslie scowled. “I—” she started, then bit her words back. _“You—”_ She huffed and clenched her fingers around the stiff fabric of her shirtsleeves, trying to hold herself back from a secondary outburst. “What’s your name, anyway?” she snapped, finally.

“Wyatt,” he said.

“Well, Wyatt, I’ve decided you’re an ass.”

He gave her a long look, then he shrugged with a maddening air of indifference and walked away—not back to the table, but out of the hall entirely. Leslie watched him clench his fists and stuff them into his pockets. She relaxed her fingers, letting go of her sleeves, and shook her arms out by her side. She wondered if everyone who had been drafted was as angry as Wyatt was and hoped Traeger wasn’t particularly close to him already. She didn’t want to have to spend any more time with him than she already had.

When she got back to the table she gave the others a sanitised summary of the conversation—Leslie had asked Wyatt to show a little more respect, and Wyatt had stormed off.

“What’s his _problem?”_ she groaned, slathering jam and cream onto a scone. Gergich had fetched desserts.

Haverford shrugged. “Something about leaving his sister, I think.”

“I believe she might be getting married soon,” Traeger mused, trying to remember. Leslie shrugged and took a huge bite of her scone.

“Oh, that’s sweet of him,” Gergich said, picking up a spoonful of cream. He spilled it on his shirt and fussed as he tried to wipe it off. “Family. What can you do without ’em? I miss my little girls something awful already. Do any of you boys have families of your own?”

“No,” Traeger said.

“Absolutely not,” Saperstein guffawed as Haverford burst out laughing.

“Damn, Gergich, that’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”

By the time Leslie swallowed her scone, Dwyer was talking about his lady friend who had married another man, and the conversation had moved on.

The day caught up with her at last, and Leslie was too exhausted to think any more about it. When she fell into her bed that night, she was asleep within moments.

***

_There’s a gentle breeze over the lawns as she sits on the grass and sparrows warble lazily from the branches of the trees on the quad. The sun bursts out from behind a cloud. She can see him on the horizon. “Shirley!” he calls. She can’t see his face but she knows it’s him, and he’s smiling. He draws closer and drops his bag of books onto the grass. There’s a soft thud as it lands and he sits down beside her. “How’s the search coming along? Spurned any eligible bachelors lately?”_

_She smiles. “Only two.”_

_“Just two! Shameful effort.”_

_“Oh, don’t worry. Mother’s got a whole parade of them lined up.” Leslie smooths her skirt down over her knees and lies back on the lawn, looking up at the passing clouds. “I’m sure I can jilt most of them just fine, but…” She sighs. “Well, she’s getting pretty serious about the whole thing.”_

_She can see his face now. It falls._

_The clouds cover the sun and the world goes dark. When the lights come back on she’s at a party. Bing Crosby croons sultry over the wireless and there’s the faint clinking of glassware as drinks are poured and toasts are made. She doesn’t recognise any of the faces. She pours herself a flute of champagne and stands in the corner. She isn’t sure why she’s here. Everything is a little dull around the edges, like it happened a long, long time ago. The door swings open and he’s there. She can’t see his face but she knows it’s him. He spots her and walks over._

_“Hello again. What’s a regular Shirley Temple doll like you doing here?” he asks. She can’t see his face but she knows he’s smiling. “Oh, I know. Husband hunting.”_

_“Do shut up, mother,” she says._

_“I deserved that, I suppose,” he admits. “I’m Samuel.”_

_“Leslie,” she smiles._

_Someone turns up the lights. The room brightens and it’s blinding and it gets brighter still, the light bursting and blazing until there’s nothing in the world but white, white, white._

_The light fades, but the white remains._

_The walls are white. The curtains are white. The sheets are white. The first thing she realises is that she’s alone. She tries to sit up, but when she moves the world spins. She remembers the wound. She remembers the pain. She remembers her emptiness, fresh as cut grass, fresh as meat from the bone. She can’t remember what happened, but she_ knows. _Her bones know the truth._

_She stares at the wall._

_Time passes. The sun sets. The colours blur and twist and the room reforms itself. Another time, another day. Balloons in the corner. Her father in the doorway. Her mother by her bed, standing, arms crossed, facing the window. Long silence._

_She licks her lips, smoothing her tongue over cracked skin. “Where is he?” she rasps. Her throat is raw, the sound of her voice barely more than a puff of air. But her mother turns. She can't see her face but she knows she's not smiling._

_“Gone,” she says._

***

Leslie couldn’t breathe. She sat bolt upright, chest heaving, throat burning like it had in the dream, waiting for a searing rip of agony. Her fingers flew to the scar on her stomach, running gently over the pale, uneven tissue and she began to remember where she was. This wasn’t Pawnee. It wasn’t summer. Her body had healed.

Slowly, her chest began to loosen. When breath came again naturally, Leslie kicked her legs over the edge of the bunk and pulled her clothes and boots back on, wincing as the leather rubbed her blisters. The room seemed bigger in the dark, yawning out in every direction, silent except for the deep, lazy breathing of dozens of sleeping men. Leslie curled her arms around her stomach and padded outside, grimacing with each careful step. She sagged against the wall of the barracks and sank slowly to the ground, pulling her boots off again. It was cold out, but she was thankful for the freshness after the nightmare. She rubbed her feet gingerly, looking up at the black night sky. The moon was new and impossibly bright in the Minnesota countryside, each star bold and clear. Constellations sprawled above her without clouds to hide them from view. She recognised Orion’s belt and the winding path of Eridanus and felt very small.

A long time ago, Leslie learned that some ancient peoples believed the dead lived among the stars. She thought of Dwyer’s three brothers and wondered if anyone had been right, yet, about what happens after death. If they were still out there somewhere far away, watching their brother proudly. Or maybe they were out there somewhere far away, screaming with everything in them that he was making a terrible mistake, that he should go home while he still had the chance. Maybe his brothers would agree with Wyatt. Maybe they’d say it wasn’t worth it at all.

Her chest was tightening again, clamping around her heart. Often, at night, the panic came. It set in deep, deep into her bones, coiled itself into her rib cage, weighed down her limbs and held her captive. Ragged, tearless sobs racked her body and her chest seized up so tight and so sharp she thought she was going to die. She always thought she was going to die, but she never did.

Eventually, Leslie remembered to slow her breath and take air in. Her legs fell to the ground and she curled her arms around her stomach, feeling the rise and fall of her belly slowly return to normal. Her face turned red in the cold night breeze and she began to shiver, clutching herself more tightly as silent sobs gave way to slow, wet tears. She sat there crying until her throat ached and her tears dried up.

She lost track of how long she sat on the ground, hugging herself next to her discarded boots. She gazed up at the stars and tried to remember where they’d been last time she looked, but her eyes blurred and she couldn’t so much as find Orion again. She was too tired to search for him, and just kept staring blankly upwards.

She stared and stared, until the sound of footsteps jolted her back to reality. She looked to see who was there, dimly worried that being outside at this hour was a punishable offence. She wasn’t sure she had the strength to get smoked tonight.

It wasn’t a sergeant. It was worse.

Wyatt was standing next to her, smoking a cigarette, looking up at the moon with almost as much sorrow as Leslie.

“Hello,” he said, without looking at her.

“Please go away,” Leslie said softly, looking at her feet.

She heard him move away a few paces, but then he stopped. “You should go inside,” he said. “It’s cold.” He hesitated like he was waiting for her to say something, but she didn’t. Wyatt started walking again and the footsteps faded into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: Please don't use compression bandages/ace bandages as binders! They can damage your ribs and your lungs. Buy a purpose-made chest binder instead. :)


End file.
